Active engagement materials for upper-division nuclear and particle physics courses are being developed for the purpose of improving student learning. More than 20 years of physics education research has created a variety of well-documented active engagement pedagogies for introductory courses whose effectiveness is supported by empirical evidence, yet few advances have been implemented in upper-division courses. The nuclear and particle physics materials being developed include: (a) conceptual discussion questions for use with peer instruction, (b) warm-up questions for use with "Just-in-Time" teaching, (c) "back of the envelope" estimation questions and small-group case studies that incorporate recent nuclear and particle physics findings and databases, as well as (d) conceptual exam questions. Ongoing formative assessment of student responses is allowing for continual improvements of these materials and methods.
Applying these active engagement approaches to a new course requires a large up-front investment from instructors. Therefore the project team is creating a range of materials so that instructors with a wide variety of styles can pick up and use them with ease. The materials are being classroom tested at a diverse group of institutions, with subsequent refinement before being published for the physics education community as a whole. In addition to several professional presentations for the broader physics education community, the materials being developed in this project are being disseminated through several digital libraries, including ComPADRE, MERLOT, the JiTT Digital Library, NSDL, and the Interactive Learning Toolkit (ILT) at Harvard.
